Over the last few weeks, I have been synthesizing and drafting a literature review for my professor, regarding the role of agricultural advisors in farming technology uptake. This is quite exciting because I’m learning so much about the field and I also feel as though I am contributing to a greater understanding of this particular area of study, which I suppose is a joy that can be shared by most researchers. The point of researching something is not just to improve one’s own understanding of it, but to spread that information with other people, which I believe can be very satisfying. However, I had no idea that there was just so much reading involved! This may sound naïve, but the number of papers I have read just to write a 6 page paper is astounding, especially as only a handful of the papers I read were incorporated into my review. More than anything, this work has helped me understand just how much work goes into the spread and transfer of information from one sphere to another. Yet the sense of accomplishment that comes with this is definitely worth the amount of seemingly fruitless work that is put into it.

First of all, I’ve started experimenting with different types of Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) in the culture media I use for live cell imaging of isolated fly gonads. I’m doing this to find a type of serum that optimizes cell differentiation observed in the gonads under the confocal microscope. Recently, I established a set of control conditions under which isolated gonads can survive for 12 hours. I will use these conditions for all my trials. I then ran a trial using Sigma brand FBS and Optima brand FBS. Unfortunately, I saw no differentiation using either type of FBS. Next, I will try using fresh versions of each type of FBS since both versions I previously used were nearing their expiration dates. If this also doesn’t work, I may play around with different concentrations of FBS in the culture media and different types of insect media (another major ingredient in live cell imaging culture media).

Hello again followers! Welcome back to the (kind of) weekly installment of updates about my research project. The past few days have been pretty sweltering here in the ‘Burg, so I’ve really embraced a permanent habitation inside of Swem Library.